Lovely Wild (14 page)

TWENTY-SEVEN

SOME PIECE OF
shit hillbilly redneck had thrown rocks at his kids.

Anger still burned in Ryan’s gut at the way the cop had handled it. For a moment, unease at his decision to bring them back here did a tumble-turn in his belly, but then he reminded himself that this choice, this book, was going to give them all their lives back. Better than before.

And he was doing it for them, he told himself. To make sure they didn’t lose all the things they’d grown accustomed to having. To make sure he could keep providing for them.

But what good did providing do when he couldn’t protect them?

Ryan scrubbed at his mouth with the heel of his hand, then took another long pull on his beer. The blinking cursor mocked him. He put his hands on the keyboard, half a page written, and couldn’t think of another damn word. He’d organized all the files and reports and made an outline of how he wanted the book to go.

He just couldn’t write the damn thing.

It was too hot in here, for one thing. No air-conditioning, and whoever had converted this screened porch into a three-season room hadn’t done such a great job with the windows. Only half of them opened. Besides, there was something disturbing about being this open to the woods outside. During the daytime it was fine. Soothing, even, to watch the leaves shift and flutter. But at night, with the lights inside making it impossible to see out, all he got was the creeps.

He got up and let the ragged, half-broken blinds down. If someone came around again, he vowed, he would beat the shit out of them. If someone messed with his family he would do what he needed to take care of them.

At his desk, he looked at the last folder he’d been organizing. Photos of a filthy child, hair matted, mouth pulled wide in a scream, being carried under the arm of a tall man with a beard. The background was somewhat familiar—the house and the barn, though both were half-obscured by the rampant weeds and bushes of the yard. The drive that was now made of white gravel was nothing but dirt and weeds crushed under the tires of a waiting van. Behind the man was a woman with a grim look, and behind her, half out of frame, a pair of coverall-wearing animal control people using loop hooks to capture what appeared to be several snarling, cowering dogs.

In the girl’s hand was an unidentified object. Some sort of toy. Equally as dirty and unkempt as the girl herself, it looked as though it could be some sort of Glow Worm toy—the kids both had them when they were small. Hug the soft worm bodies and the oversize plastic head lit up. This one had material flapping from its sides, something like a cape. Ryan couldn’t quite make out what it was, but another picture in the file, this time a close-up of the toy, showed him it was a butterfly. On the back of the picture was scrawled a single word.

Mariposa.

Spanish for butterfly, and the only word the girl would say when they brought her in. It was how they figured out it was her name. Or maybe it was just what they decided to call her and what she answered to. All he knew was that his wife was taken from this house, screaming and clutching a toy butterfly.

Ryan took another drink of beer that had gone too warm and sat back in his chair. The bright light from the laptop screen made his eyes tired. He should pack it in for the night. Get a fresh start tomorrow, when he could surely sit down and pound out a couple chapters. Instead of going upstairs, though, he turned again to the stack of papers he’d organized according to date and content. Flipping through them, he paused to read again the places he’d highlighted or marked with sticky notes.

She was something of a miracle, his wife.

He knew about feral children, of course. You couldn’t make it through psych rotations without hearing about some of the most famous cases. Genie, the girl who’d been tied to a potty chair in a dark back room. Louis the dogboy of France. Kaspar Hauser, the German teenager who’d claimed to have been raised in a tiny cell. The common thread among all of these cases was that most of those children—the neglected, the abused, the outright abandoned or tragically lost—were never able to maintain what might be considered a “normal” life.

There was the more recent case of the woman born in the Louisiana bayou and raised by a grandmother who’d been too ill to really take care of her. At five years old, she was sent to live in California with her mother, who’d had many other children but was incapable of really taking care of any of them. She’d been bounced from mother to father to foster care until she was finally adopted. She admitted that though she’d married and had a child, she couldn’t really relate to other people. She could live in society, but she’d never really learned to fit in. She preferred to live in isolation, similar to the way she’d been raised.

She’d been raised not unlike his wife.

Upstairs, Mari slept naked in a bed that was just enough smaller than their usual one that it still felt awkward to him. Upstairs were their children. Ryan knew without a doubt his wife loved Kendra and Ethan fiercely, without reserve. He’d seen her defend them against bullies on the playground or teachers who were a little too unkind. He had no doubts about his wife’s capabilities for emotion when it came to their kids. And in their marriage, Ryan had always known she was a little more distant from him than the wives of his friends, or the patients who came in complaining about how much they hated their husbands. Ryan had always loved that about Mari, that she stepped back and allowed him to be independent. That she didn’t check up on him.

And look where it had gotten him.

Mari had been fifteen when he met her for the first time, though he’d been hearing stories about her for years. The Pine Grove Pixie. His dad’s greatest challenge and best success. The reason Leon Calder spent so many late nights away from home when Ryan was young, and the reason his parents had split. At twenty-three and with years of neglectful fatherhood to numb him, the divorce shouldn’t have bothered Ryan as much as it had, but it had been a long time before he’d gone to see his father in his new house, and the girl he’d adopted.

The first time he’d seen her, his dad had called out, “Mari! Come meet Ryan!”

He’d been prepared to hate or at least mildly dislike her, out of loyalty to his mom if nothing else. After all, this girl had pretty much ruined not only his dad’s marriage but his career—even though she’d been the subject that had tipped his dad toward fame, the ethics involved in his adoption of her had basically guaranteed his dad’s forced retirement.

But Ryan hadn’t hated her. In fact, the opposite. She’d been wearing a simple dark pleated skirt and white blouse. Knee socks. Hair in twin braids. Saddle shoes. Because that was the uniform his dad had insisted on. She’d been a kid and should’ve been way below Ryan’s interest—and she had been. At least in that way. At least for a time. She’d come down the stairs in her schoolgirl outfit and fixed him with a look so unwavering and blunt, like nothing he’d ever had from anyone before, that he’d found himself instantly wanting to...protect her. He’d understood then what had so moved his dad.

Later, Ryan wouldn’t stop wanting to protect her, but he did start wanting to peel away the layers and get inside her. She wasn’t like other women. She was blunt and honest, as though she were incapable of deception, but that didn’t mean she
couldn’t
lie. It just meant that she didn’t.

Annette had come on to him in that same way, her relentlessness erotic and arousing. Who didn’t want to be wanted that way? Like you made all the difference in the world to that one person?

And so maybe his marriage had become a little stale and strange and he’d let himself be carried away by an opened set of thighs. He loved his wife and the family they’d made together. That didn’t change, not matter what else had.

Ryan rubbed at his eyes until they blurred and the video he’d been letting run without really watching went to static. It was late. The house was dark. The kids had gone to bed early for once, leaving him undistracted by the creaking of the floors above while they wandered back and forth or did whatever the hell they did when they were up late because it was summer.

He clicked off the television and sat in the darkness. Listened for the sound of footsteps and heard none. Then he went upstairs and crawled into bed beside his wife, where he pulled her close to him and breathed the scent of her, that warm familiar scent.

And he wondered if by knowing her better, he was somehow going to lose her.

TWENTY-EIGHT

“SOME KIND OF,
what...sasquatch?” Sammy sounded distracted.

Kendra imagined her friend hanging upside down, phone at her ear, while she watched TV. “No. I don’t know. I mean...the cop wouldn’t say. But it’s weird, you know? The old lady from down the lane told me to watch out for stuff in the woods, too.”

“Creepy.” Sammy’s voice crackled and broke up for a few seconds, and Kendra scowled. She held her phone from her ear. Two freaking bars. Now one.

“The service is better up there,” she said overtop of whatever Sammy was saying.

“What?”

“I have crap service here!” Kendra lowered her voice, aware that though her dad was holed up in his office doing whatever it was he’d brought them here to do, her mom could be down the hall. “It was better up on the mountain, that’s what I was saying.”

“So...take a walk. You’re probably bored as shit there, right?” Sammy sounded bored herself. “You don’t even have internet, right?”

“No. Just basic cable.”

“So take a walk.”

Kendra rolled over on her bed to look out the window. She could only see a bit of sky, some clouds. The tops of the trees. She shivered. “I’m freaked out.”

“By the sasquatch? Girl, please. That is some tired excuse.” Sammy snorted laughter.

Not for the first time in their friendship, Kendra wanted to hang up on her friend. Sammy could be such a bitch sometimes. Kendra always thought it was because she was an only child with parents who basically ignored her. She hadn’t ever, like, learned how to treat people. But sometimes Kendra thought it was because there was something wrong with
her,
that Sammy thought she could treat her like that and Kendra hardly ever did anything about it.

“Someone took my library book out of the woods by the creek, and I saw footprints there. Big ones. Someone threw rocks at us. And splashed mud all over our house. My dad blamed Ethan, but he said he didn’t do it. Maybe he really didn’t. It’s not a freaking joke.”

“Chill, wow. I’m just kidding with you.”

“It’s not funny, Sammy.”

Silence on the other end of the phone, this time not caused by lack of signal strength. Sammy was good at that, too. Making Kendra feel bad for getting upset the few times she did.

“Sorry.” Sammy didn’t sound anything close to sorry.

Kendra imagined the roll of Sammy’s eyes. “It was scary. You’d be freaked out if you were here.”

“Bet I wouldn’t.”

“You would,” Kendra said. “You can’t even watch scary movies.”

The line was silent again, broken every second or so by a piece of Sammy’s reply. “...whiny little bitch.”

Kendra wasn’t sure she really wanted to hear what Sammy had said. “You’re breaking up. I can’t hear you.”

“So take a walk up to that mountaintop or whatever the hell you said it was. Good signal there. I mean, unless you don’t want to hear what Logan said about you.”

Kendra certainly did want to hear that. She rolled upright, searching for her sneakers. “What did he say?”

But the call was lost in the moment she shifted to pull on a pair of socks. Muttering a curse, she shoved the phone in her shorts pocket and pulled her hair up into a ponytail, then put on a ball cap. Daddy had said something about ticks out in the woods. Gross.

Kendra found her mom in the kitchen. She was mixing the ingredients for bread dough into the machine’s pan. A tray of cookies sat on top of the oven. Her mom had flour on one cheek and her hair was a mess, but she looked up with a smile when Kendra came down the stairs.

“Hi, honey. Want a cookie?”

“Sure. Can we go play in the stream? I promise to make sure Ethan’s careful.” Kendra helped herself to one of the gooey chocolate chip cookies and waited for her mom to forbid her.

Her mom paused. Turned. “You really think that’s possible?”

“Well...I can try.” Kendra put on her winningest face. “Please? It’s hot as balls here...and crazy boring.”

Her mom laughed and shook her head. “Kiki. Yuck.”

“Please?”

Her mom sighed. Her dad would’ve said no by now without even listening to Kendra’s reasons for wanting to go. But her mom had never been the type to hold them back, even from stuff that might be considered dangerous.

“I want you back by dinnertime. I mean it. Stay close to our yard, don’t go anywhere else. And you text me every twenty minutes.”

Kendra rolled her eyes, but nodded, not bothering to point out that her mom was surely not going to get the texts, because that was sort of the whole point about why Kendra wanted to hike to the top of the mountain in the first place. “Sure, whatever.”

“Here. Take some cookies and some lemonade. Don’t drink the water from the stream.” Her mom paused, again with that faraway look she’d been having so often lately. “I mean...it could be dangerous. And don’t be gone long. And be careful.”

It was a long, long list of commands, unusual coming from her mother, but it made Kendra feel all the worse for lying about what she was really going to do. She hugged her mom. Hard. “Love you, Mom.”

Her mom looked surprised, then squeezed her in return. “I love you, too, Kiki.”

Outside, Kendra found the monkeybrat already fooling around in the piss-trickle of water that was trying to be a creek, even though he wasn’t supposed to be. “Hey, dork. I’m going for a walk. Want to come along?”

“In the woods?” Ethan tossed a stone into the water to make a splash, though he was standing far enough away he wouldn’t get wet. “Are you crazy?”

“Are you scared?”

He looked stubborn. “No. Well, sure, yeah! Someone threw rocks at us, Kiki. It really hurt.”

“Does your face hurt?” she asked. “’Cuz it sure hurts me!”

Ethan jumped at her, fist raised, but she knew he wasn’t going to hit her. He settled for kicking out at her, instead, not even coming close. “Jerk.”

“Come with me,” she said, contrite and not wanting to be alone in the forest, even if it meant hanging with her little brother. “It’s not too far, and there’s something cool up there I want to show you.”

His eyes lit up. “What?”

“You’ll see when we get there,” Kendra promised. “C’mon.”

Halfway up the mountain, on the narrow and not-quite-there trail, Ethan started complaining about being thirsty and hot, though it was a gazillion times cooler in the trees than it would’ve been down in the yard. Kendra frowned, sweat running in her eyes and bugs swarming around her. She swatted at them and told him to shut up, or she was going to leave him there.

It was a tempting thought.

“It’s just a little farther, dummy, and I have lemonade and snacks in my bag.”

He did keep whining, but in another five minutes just before she was ready to give up, haul off and smack him, they eased into a clearing she’d never been in before. Ethan stopped short, nearly tripping her. In a second, Kendra saw why.

It was a house. A small house. Crooked, like the one in the nursery rhyme the monkeybrat had loved so much when he was little. He’d made Kendra read it to him over and over. There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile.

“And they all lived together in a little crooked house,” she murmured.

Just like the one in front of her, she imagined. Built of gray and faded boards, with a slanting roof and a door hanging half-open. One open window, hung with ragged curtains. They stirred in the same breeze that tossed the leaves on the trees.

“Whoa,” Ethan said. “Weird.”

Kendra moved toward it but stopped with one foot on the natural stone step leading up to the threshold. It sure didn’t look like anyone lived there, but on the other hand, what if this was like something out of the Blair Witch Project? She looked around at the trees ringing the small clearing, then at the house itself. No weird little dolls made of string and sticks. She listened hard but heard only the soft sigh of wind in the trees.

Ethan was already running ahead to kick at the fire ring in front of the house, scuffing his sneakers in the black soot. He bent to pick something from the fire. “Kiki, look! Is this...bones?”

“Gross, dork! Put those down!” Kendra already had her phone out, lifting it to take a picture of the shack, just to prove it was real.

“Let’s go in!”

“No! You can’t go in there. It’s probably not safe. Look at it.”

“It looks okay.”

“What if someone lives in there?” she asked him, and they both stared at each other solemnly. “You can’t just go in someone’s house without being invited.”

“Do you really think someone
lives
in there?” Ethan asked.

She looked at it. The clearing showed no signs of any life. The fire ring had been used, but there was no telling how long ago. There weren’t any beer cans or anything that would show this off as a place where kids snuck out to party behind their parents’ backs. Not out here, anyway. No telling what was in the shack.

“Yeah, probably Bigfoot.”

“Bigfoot doesn’t live in a house,” Ethan said in scorn.

Kendra gave him a steady, intimidating stare. “Okay, then. Not Bigfoot. But someone. Some...thing. You better not go in there. I bet there’s things like teeth in jars and quilts made out of human skin!”

Ethan’s eyes rounded. “Shut up!”

She’d get in trouble for this later when he couldn’t sleep or had nightmares, but it was totally worth it at the moment, watching his face. “I’m serious. Someone lives in that house, all right. The boogeyman!”

“No such thing!”

“Oh, yeah?” Kendra jerked her chin toward the house. “Dare you to go in, then.”

Ethan crossed his arms. “Shut up.”

“Dare you.”

She shouldn’t have dared him the second time, because the kid was just dumb enough to do it. Before she could stop him, Ethan had leaped up the small stone steps, two at a time, and yanked open the front door. It came open with a creak that was loud enough to make her scream.

“Get back here!” Kendra jumped after him, yanked the back of his shirt to stop him getting inside. “Jesus, Ethan, no!”

Both of them stumbled through the doorway at the same time.

Inside, everything was shadow. One small room lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves. Lots of books, which seemed out of place in a place like this. An old-fashioned hand-pump at a sink, cupboards underneath. A glass mason jar with several drooping peacock feathers stuck inside it.

At least there weren’t any jars full of teeth.

Still, it was freaky. The windows were covered with shredded lacy curtains, hammered right into the wood. A small ladder rested against the far wall, leading up to what looked like a sleeping loft not even tall enough for someone to stand upright in. If someone lived there, they weren’t there now.

“Nothing in here,” Ethan said.

He was right, but Kendra still didn’t like the look of it. “Let’s get out of here.”

For once, her brother didn’t argue. He hopped ahead of her, down the stone steps, back out into the grass. In the doorway, Kendra thought she heard something shift in the sleeping loft, something like a sigh, and her heart lurched into her throat as she spun, hands up, expecting to see something looming out of the shadows.

Nothing.

“Shit,” she breathed aloud.

Her hands shook, and what had she expected, anyway? To use her nonexistent karate skills to fend off the boogeyman? She backed up a step, out the door, leaving it ajar.

“Ethan! Let’s go!” Five signal bars or not, this place was creepy. “Now!”

“But...”

“Now,” Kendra said the way her mom did when she meant business. “Let’s get out of here.”

At the edge of the clearing she looked back. It might’ve been the shadows or the fact she needed glasses, but what she saw made her shove her brother along faster.

The door to the shack had closed.